


This Is Not What You're Supposed to See

by theletterelle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Background Character Death, Canonical Child Abuse, Character Study, Gen, Physical Abuse, Rationalization of Child Abuse by Abuser, Verbal Abuse, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 07:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theletterelle/pseuds/theletterelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one is a monster in their own mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not What You're Supposed to See

**Author's Note:**

> Deep thanks to [bootson](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bootson/pseuds/bootson) for letting me ramble at her, and then for looking at my rambling and telling me how to fix it.
> 
> Title is from "Forest" by Twenty One Pilots.

i. Lahey was _good_ at what he did. He has the trophies to prove it. Not all of them are first place, but they crowd the mantelpiece, where he still keeps them carefully dusted. There’s a picture of him on the wall, back when his body was lean and powerful, pushing off the starting block into a shallow dive. Perfect form. Perfect speed. 

He’d come in second in that race, and the guy who came in first went on to be an alternate for the Olympic team after college. He keeps the picture up anyway. Most of the time he can forget the two-tenths of a second. It’s the best picture he has of his high school years.

He got a swimming scholarship to college, where he met Jill. There’s a another picture on the wall, the two of them at one of the meets, smiling at the camera with the sun in their eyes. Lahey’s in a Speedo, goggles dangling on his chest, and Jill’s laughing.

Lahey wasn’t the star of the team, but he worked hard at it, placing in more races than not. He studied kinesiology, and dated Jill, and graduated with a degree in exercise science and a fiancee who made amazing spaghetti sauce and snorted when she laughed. They laughed a lot. 

He couldn’t find a coaching job after college, but she was a legal secretary and made decent money, so they were less poor than a lot of couples right out of school. They moved to San Francisco so she could work at one of the big firms there. Lahey did what he had to do (data entry mostly, until he got a security guard job so he didn’t have to be in a damn office) for a few years, until he managed to get a job as an assistant coach at a private school.

 

ii. Lahey and Jill didn’t start trying for kids until their late twenties. Maybe that was their mistake, not doing it sooner. It took almost five years, miscarriage after miscarriage, for a pregnancy to last past the first trimester. When Camden was born, Lahey was there to push Jill’s sweaty hair off her face, kiss her, and cradle his tiny son who had been so long in coming. Lahey doesn’t think he’s ever smiled as much or as wide as he did that day.

They were a family, the three of them, and if Jill ever looked them over and wished for more, she never said anything. She taught Cam to tell a weed from a sprout so he could help her in the garden. She made her spaghetti sauce from scratch, Lahey helping her can it on the weekends he didn’t have a meet. They had rows of the jars lining the kitchen shelves.

 

iii. Neither of them could believe it when Jill started feeling dizzy in the mornings again. Camden was seven, and danced around the room when they told him he was going to have a little brother or sister. Jill laughed her snorting laugh at him. Lahey laughed with her, even as worried as he was. His assistant coaching job had never turned into something more; when the old coach retired, they hired a guy with a masters degree who knew all the right things to say to the parents. 

Lahey had looked around for other job possibilities, but he was almost forty by then, not as up on the latest developments as he should have been. If he’d known pregnancy was a possibility, they might have been more careful, maybe taken more precautions. He didn’t say anything to dampen Jill’s happiness though. She glowed like a candle lit her from within.

He’d just have to work harder, that’s all.

Isaac was almost born in the car. ( _I’m not that far along yet, they’ll just send me home if we go to the hospital now,_ until it was almost too late.) Camden used to laugh at him, call him the spare tire. Isaac thought that was hilarious. Money was tighter than it used to be, though, even when Jill got promoted to partner secretary. With all the new dot-com businesses throwing money around, things in San Francisco quickly got a lot more expensive. Their rent jumped fifty percent, and then another fifty. Lahey got used to a tightness in his shoulders and the taste of acid reflux. 

 

iv. They were making things work. It was harder, but things worked, right up until Lahey got a call from the police as he was walking in the door one evening.

_Accident._

_Crosswalk._

_Wrong place. Wrong time._

_So very sorry for your loss._

The driver’s insurance paid out a settlement. There was enough to keep them afloat for a while (not enough, never enough to make up the difference between her and not-her). Isaac was only seven; he cried more days than he didn’t. Cam’s shoulders became tight like his dad’s. They lived in that house together, Lahey with his dwindling hopes for his career, Cam dealing with Isaac as best he could, until Lahey finally found a new job in a small town an hour and a half north of Sacramento. It was cheaper than where they were, and the job was a step up even if the school was a step down. The swim team wasn’t big, but it was promising. They packed up and moved. 

 

v. Beacon Hills wasn’t the worst place they could have ended up. Jill’s life insurance bought them a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Lahey did his best to furnish it, which basically meant he went to the West Sacramento Ikea and loaded up on everything it looked like they might need. He got a bed for Cam, now that he had his own room, and rugs and kitchen gadgets and bookshelves and lamps. Lahey started work at the end of July, and Cam entered Beacon Hills High two weeks later.

They managed, the three of them. Cam got along in school just fine; he made friends, he studied, he ran track to improve his wind, and when he was a sophomore he tried out for the swim team. One of the hopefuls argued that he’d beaten Cam, but Lahey shut that down quick. Cam earned his place, fair and square. He wasn’t going to give his son a break, not when life held no breaks.

Isaac got clingy after they moved. He cried when Lahey drove him to school that first day, even though he was in second grade for Christ’s sake. He kept it up until Lahey’s nerves were fraying to nothing, till Lahey gave up, bought him a bike, and made him take himself to school. He could cry all he wanted, as long as Lahey didn’t have to hear it.

 

vi. When Lahey looked at the picture on the wall of himself diving into the pool, he felt like all his life between then and now had never actually existed, a story someone told him one night when he was too tired to comprehend it. Life was a whiny kid, a moody teenager, and a back that creaked and popped when he got up in the morning. 

His job was the saving grace of his life. He loved those kids, the ones who listened to his advice and swam their hearts out for him. The team placed for the first time the first year Lahey coached, and each year after made them higher, better. He would stretch after-school practice out as long as he could, Camden and the others completing endless laps, Isaac huddled on the bleachers doing homework or reading his comics. During those hours, Lahey was king, and it felt like all of life behind him had been important only as steps to bring him to this place.

The high would last until they got home, until Isaac’s whining or Camden’s sullenness got the better of Lahey, and he snapped and sent them to their rooms. Something about his sons rubbed each other the wrong way, and they’d argue and yell despite Cam being a full eight years older and way beyond fighting with a little kid. _I told you to stay the hell out of my room!_ Cam would shout, and Isaac would shriek back _This isn’t just your house, Cam, other people live here too!_ and they would go back and forth until Lahey thought the pressure building behind his eyes would explode.

When he couldn’t take it anymore, he’d march up there and make it stop. He’d take Isaac’s action figures, maybe Cam’s iPod and phone, throw them against the wall or grind them under his heel, plastic cracking and splintering. The first time they both stared at him in shock, quarrel forgotten. _What?_ Lahey said. _That was your fault._

It didn’t take too much of that to quiet the fighting down. 

 

vii. When Camden graduated, swim team captain and third place at State that year, Lahey’s grin reached almost back to his ears. Isaac cheered when they called Cam’s name, and Cam waved at him. The three of them went out for dinner that night, and Cam showed Lahey the enlistment papers. _GI Bill,_ said Cam. _One term of enlistment, and I get free college and a stipend._ He looked over at Isaac, who was inhaling breadsticks as fast as his skinny arms could shove them into his mouth. _I think we both know there’s not enough to stretch for both of us. And we know which of us would make it in the army._

It was a good idea. It would have worked, if life hadn’t decided to kick them in the teeth again.

_Improvised explosive device._

_Checkpoint._

_Wrong place, wrong time._

_So very sorry for your loss._

Isaac was thirteen. Lahey was fifty-three. He felt eighty.

He had always been a take-no-nonsense coach, unlike that idiot Finstock. Lahey had pushed his kids, demanded more of them than they had to give, and they found it and gave it to him anyway. It was why he was a success. Until he wasn’t. Until his demands turned bitter and caustic, and the kids were less energized and more angry and hurt. Until it culminated in a mass team walkout, and Lahey went to a meeting with the principal and the superintendent.

_Until you’re yourself again,_ they said. _You’ve been through so much. We all sympathize._

_Fuck your sympathy,_ Lahey had said, and walked out.

He took the first job he could find, groundskeeping at the local graveyard. It suited him. He didn’t want to talk to anyone anymore, and other than the county official who gave him his orders, no one talked to him. He kept the graves clear, tossed out the flowers when they went bad, used the backhoe to dig neat rectangular holes when they were needed. 

 

viii. Isaac had withdrawn when Cam died. The two of them had stood at the graveside service together, wind whipping their hair and turning their noses red. Isaac hadn’t said a word afterward, not for days. That was fine with Lahey. They spent their days together, wordless, silence a blanket over the hurt.

It couldn’t last. His son, the only family he had left, couldn’t let it last. Talking back to teachers, starting fights in school, failing two classes-- Lahey tried to talk to him about it, he warned him, but Isaac shrugged him off. Everything Lahey had learned about life, everything that life had beaten into him, he told Isaac. Isaac didn’t care.

Lahey _saw_ Isaac. He saw that look, and it was the same look Lahey had on his face in the picture. It said that life was good, better things were ahead, and nothing would ever touch him. Lahey wanted to laugh at that, long and loud until his laugh didn’t sound like laughter anymore. It’s no wonder he snapped that first time. Snapped and let fly with a slap that knocked Isaac against the wall, echoing in the silence. They stared at each other until Lahey sent him to his room, and Isaac stumbled away.

He wouldn’t keep losing it like this if not for Isaac. If Isaac would listen. Pay attention. Work hard and follow the rules, and maybe life would leave him alone. But Isaac wouldn’t. He pushed and pushed until he pushed Lahey right over the edge, again and again. And Lahey wasn’t going down alone.

He got the freezer for twenty bucks at a garage sale. The latch didn’t work, and the rich asshole selling it didn’t want to spend the fifteen minutes it’d take to fix it. Fine, that was okay with Lahey. The cemetery didn’t pay like the high school, so a bargain was a bargain. He planned to use it for the meat he killed during hunting season. All it needed was a new latch. Easy enough.

How old was Isaac? Fourteen? Fifteen? Old enough to know better, certainly. Old enough to know the difference between a seven and a nine. Isaac was supposed to help, but he didn’t listen and fucked it all up, apologizing as if that could help now that the freezer would never be good for anything-- Lahey felt the pressure build behind his eyes, and he felt the acidic words fall off his tongue, felt his fist clench and draw back and fly, and this time it scared him, he was losing control, he wasn’t just snapping he was breaking--

_GET IN,_ he shouted, and Isaac half-fell into the box, nose bleeding and eyes wide with terror, and Lahey slammed the lid down and pulled the chain around it and the lock clicked--

And everything stopped. Everything fell into place. The pressure was gone, there was quiet in his mind and in the room. Isaac was out of the picture. That smile, that naive confidence was gone. Isaac would get it now, he’d understand. When he’d learned his lesson, he could come out. 

_Dad?_ There was a knock from in the box. _Dad, I’m sorry. Can I. Please. I’m sorry._ The knocking turned to pounding, turned to screaming. It didn’t matter. Lahey looked around the basement walls at all the dusty jars of spaghetti sauce, breathed deeply, and headed upstairs.

 

ix. The freezer works as a punishment. Whenever he gets Isaac out, Isaac's quiet and compliant. Lahey doesn't even have to do it that often. Most of the time, the threat is enough. Lahey’s found that Isaac won’t shatter from a punch or a kick, so in the end the freezer really is a last resort. He only does it when Isaac won't _listen_ , when he resists and argues and lies and breaks the rules unforgivably. Like he thinks rules don't apply, like life will just let him do whatever he wants. 

That’s Isaac’s mistake. He’s stupid and naive and completely ignorant of reality. It’s up to Lahey to teach him, the responsibility of a parent to a child. And although he gets a certain satisfaction from punishing Isaac, it’s not that he wants to. He’s setting things right, like fixing a crooked picture. Isaac will grow up knowing what life is; he’ll never have that smile that says he’s untouchable. He’ll know that whatever life gives him can be taken away without warning or a chance to say goodbye. There’ll be no surprises, no floor falling out from beneath him as everything he ever had is lost, world reshaping itself into something new and horrific.

Isaac doesn’t like it, not that that’s a surprise. He cries until Lahey tells him to knock it off, _shut up and act like a man_. Isaac hunches. Isaac cringes. Isaac crouches against the wall and begs his father to stop, and it gratifies and disgusts Lahey at the same time. If Isaac wouldn’t. If Isaac would just. 

If _Isaac_.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is in no way condoning or encouraging child abuse. Hurting kids is bad. Hell, hurting anyone is bad, but especially kids.


End file.
